{"id":207128,"date":"2019-03-27T02:50:20","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T06:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=207128"},"modified":"2019-03-27T02:50:20","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T06:50:20","slug":"thai-anti-military-parties-say-they-have-seats-to-form-govt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/03\/27\/thai-anti-military-parties-say-they-have-seats-to-form-govt\/","title":{"rendered":"Thai anti military parties say they have seats to form govt"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Seven Thai political parties led by one ousted from power in a military coup said Wednesday that they believed they won enough seats in the recent general election to form the next government. (File Photo By Michael Mike\/Wikimedia commons, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BANGKOK \u2014 Seven Thai political parties led by one ousted from power in a military coup said Wednesday that they believed they won enough seats in the recent general election to form the next government.<\/p>\n

The announcement came amid concerns about potential irregularities in Sunday’s vote, the first since a 2014 coup, and before a full preliminary vote count has even been released. Official results aren’t due until May.<\/p>\n

The leader of the Pheu Thai party, which headed the last elected government, and the leaders of five other parties held a news conference to say they believed they had won more than 250 seats in the 500-seat lower house. They said another smaller had also agreed to join their potential government.<\/p>\n

“Today, we hold the fact that parties on the side of democracy have received majority support from the people, although figures are not stable yet,” Pheu Thai’s Sudarat Keyuraphan said.<\/p>\n

The Election Commission, appointed by the ruling junta’s hand-picked legislature, delayed the release of a full preliminary vote count on election night and then again on Monday. The commission has now said it will release its final preliminary results on Friday.<\/p>\n

The incomplete results reported so far show Pheu Thai won the most seats, while the military-backed Palang Pracharath party appeared to have received the most votes. Both have said those results mean they have a mandate to form the next government.<\/p>\n

Even if the Pheu Thai-led coalition comes together and it secures more than 250 lower house seats, it may not get to form the government due to the country’s new political system.<\/p>\n

Since the coup, the junta has used the absolute power it granted itself to go about rewriting the country’s laws, including commissioning a new constitution and creating an electoral system that severely handicaps parties without links to the military.<\/p>\n

Under the new rules, an unelected 250-member Senate appointed by the junta will join the 500 elected members of the lower house in a vote for prime minister, meaning a party without Senate support would have to get the support of 376 house members to ensure its choice becomes premier.<\/p>\n

The vote for prime minister will likely take place sometime in May and give Palang Pracharath’s candidate, current junta leader and Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a considerable advantage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BANGKOK \u2014 Seven Thai political parties led by one ousted from power in a military coup said Wednesday that they …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":207131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207132,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207128\/revisions\/207132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}